Yahoo Planning To Poach Youtube Stars To Start Own Video Site

A report on re/code has suggested that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is preparing to directly challenge Youtube. The web giant hasn’t had much luck getting into the video steaming space with a plan to purchase Daily Motion falling through, but this time it has a plan. Yahoo is supposedly working on luring the biggest names from Youtube by offering them a larger share of the ad revenue.

It would appear that Yahoo is not interested in allowing just about anyone on to the service; instead preferring content creators that already have a following or are capable of producing professional quality videos. In theory, this would create a better space for discovering good shows but it would also greatly reduce the amount of things to watch or discover.

The report has also indicated that Yahoo is offering their home page and high traffic sites to some content creators as advertising space. Some Youtube users have been complaining about the system of recommended videos implemented by Google which uses computer algorithms instead of humans.

Google also takes some 45 percent of ad revenue from Youtubers; a number that some find to be too high. Yahoo could potentially be promising a much lower cut, but how much lower is difficult to say. Although it would be fair to say that Yahoo’s service will definitely not be drawing in the same numbers as Youtube; which would reduce the lure of a greater percentage of ad revenue.

There is no news on when this service would begin to roll out, but re/code suggests that Yahoo would attempt to buy Vimeo as part of the plan.